Hugo House

The Hugo House is a crusty, inside-voices old house in Capitol Hill that teaches writing courses—flash fiction, poetry, journalism, etc. Last week I took a class called “Going Under: Successful Sumbersion in Journalism and Beyond.” Next week I’m taking “The Art of Interviewing.” You should too.

One-day courses cost about $94; 4-week courses are about $360.

http://hugohouse.org

School of Visual Concepts

If you want to learn anything about writing, designing or developing for the web (or print) and you’ve got limited time and budget, SVC is the place to go. All classes are taught by practicing pros, and the material is very practical and hands-on. I took a course called “Writing for the Web” a few years ago; I may be teaching a course this winter.

Prices range from $100 for a half-day workshop to $495 for a 10-wk course.

http://www.svcseattle.com/

Town Hall Seattle

I go to Town Hall for inspiration, and I regularly go by myself. I’ve seen Jonathon Saffron Foer, Ingrid Betancourt, Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem and more—at least one of these has cried on stage. One-hour lectures are held around 7pm in a grande roman-revival hall.

Lectures are 5 DOLLARS. Go support this awesome place.

http://www.townhallseattle.org/

Elliot Bay Books Events

The Elliot Bay Books Cafe is the only one in Seattle where I can work done, but I mostly go for the books and lectures. Famous writers are always giving intimate book readings in the basement.

FREE.

http://www.elliottbaybook.com/node/events/current

AIGA Seattle

The American Institute of Graphic Arts hosts studio tours, schmoozing parties, design contests, lectures by industry peeps, and more—all the time. I was a member for a while, and I liked the discounts and publications I got.

http://www.aigaseattle.org/

Seattle Arts & Lectures

I’ve never been, but their mission is to connect ‘people and ideas’ and folks like Jonathon Franzen and Wendell Berry show up there.

$15-70 for single tickets; much more than that for a subscription.

http://www.lectures.org/about_us/

Northwest Film Forum

I think I saw Art & Copy, Objectified and a handful of other internety movies there, but NWFF offers the best independent films and documentaries I have ever found in one place—the one where thousands of people get plastered on Willie Nelson’s lawn, for example.

Tickets are $9 and there’s cumin for your popcorn.

http://www.nwfilmforum.org/

I keep going back to his famous essay, Politics and the English Language, every time I need solid writing advice. In the article he talks about what bad writing is (unclear), where it comes from (lack of thought, effort, or training at best; insincerity at worst), and how to fix it (work harder).

Below are his main points: 63 years old and relevant as ever.

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never us a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Common sense says that to be good writer, you just need to write—constantly. Good advice, but when it comes to publishing, it’s not smart to put every little thing you eek out on the web as a way of meeting your editorial or content strategy, or generating traffic.

The best writing comes when you’re actually interested in and committed to what you’re about to say.

Here’s an outtake from Zeldman’s post, pertinent especially for bloggers and non-staff writers:

You are not writing for Amazon, or to fit a staff proofreader’s vacation schedule, as important and real as those considerations may be. You are writing for readers, a duty as sacred, in its way, as parenting. If you don’t believe the previous sentence, if you think writing is mainly about getting paid, I’m sorry you wasted your time reading this page, and I hope you find another way to earn a living soon. The world is already choking on half-considered, squeezed-out shit. There’s no need to add to the pile.

You can take a class. Wake up every morning at 6am and meditate. Read books. Interview experts. Get an entry-level job in the field. Be a genius.

Yet, no matter what asymptotic magic tricks you stumble upon, there’s no substitute for good, old-fashioned practice makes perfect. True experts–the real-deal human beings who shake things up in the world–are not simply shrewd managers of super-advanced strategies for success. And though it certainly helps, they aren’t always gifted with lucky breaks early on, either. And they’re rarely geniuses. More than anything else, experts are hard-working people who practice a lot.

I love this bit from Malcom Gladwell’s [Outliers](http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html). (Get the book, by the way. You’ll read it in two days.):

The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimal level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again…No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery…This is true even of people we think of as prodigies.

I frequently hear folks talk about people they view as successful with a sense of awe and disbelief. They say things like, “X is just…a genius” Or “I don’t understand how they do it…it’s just, like, effortless.” This language signals a sad, weird projection of our deepest and worst fears: that success only comes to the naturally gifted, lucky few. We then convince ourselves to tap out.

There is a kernel, but only a kernel, of truth in this fear: Gifted folks have an easier time, and therefore experience more rewards, to begin with. In instances where early, more frequent rewards motivate people to practice, the cycle of greatness is self-perpetuating. But the idea that the majority of experts even fit into the “gifted and talented” category is preposterous and damaging. I call shenanigans.

If you really want to go there, it’s possible for anyone to achieve get-famous mastery in 5 years, assuming you work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Or, if you’re like me and prefer a more moderate rendering of the lesson: Set up conditions so that you can practice often, and you’ll get where you want to be–no matter how late in the game you join.